The distraught mom, Alexis Wiederholt, at first thought her infant child had been wounded with a paintball gun after she found him inside the Elmo, Mo., home around 9 a.m. Monday, Nodaway County Sheriff Darren White said. The shooting appears accidental but is under investigation, he said.
A 9-month-old baby boy was shot dead in his playpen after his 5-year-old brother found a loaded revolver and fired the weapon, the sheriff in Missouri’s rural Nodaway County said.
The boy’s mother, 24-year-old Alexis Wiederholt, originally told police the infant had been shot in the head with a paintball gun after she found the mortally wounded child just before 9 a.m. Monday in the master bedroom of the Elmo home, Nodaway County Sheriff Darren White told the Daily News.
It was White himself who took the 911 call from a distraught Wiederholt.
“When law enforcement and EMS got there, they determined it was not a paintball gun but a .22-caliber Magnum handgun and that the 9-month-old was struck it the head,” White said.
The baby was flown some 120 miles south to a children’s hospital in Kansas City, where he was pronounced dead.
Wiederholt’s three other sons, including the 5-year-old shooter, were home at the time and uninjured.
The 5-year-old boy found the loaded weapon on a shelf built into a headboard of the bed inside the Scott St. home, White said.
The home is owned by Bill Porter, Wiederholt’s father and the children’s grandfather,> a neighbor told KETV.
“I just noticed there was something was going on, so I just went up there and got the kids and brought them here,” family friend Kathy Armentrout told the TV station.
Authorities believe the shooting was accidental, but an investigation is under way and all information will be turned over to Prosecuting Attorney Robert Rice. A child fatality review board, composed of law enforcement officers, EMS, and county health officials, among others, will meet Wednesday afternoon to discuss the shooting at the behest of Rice, White said.